Musical Touring using R99 Diesel Fuel
When i saw a renewable diesel called R99 and read that it was renewable and sustainable, I started to use it. I tried it in some diesel vehicles with great success. Having recently upgraded my bus to biodiesel for touring, and having encountered problems with getting good reliable Bio Diesel, I was thrilled to find renewable R99 diesel which had none of the Cold weather problems of bio-diesel. Bio Diesel gels in cold weather. I had installed a custom fuel heating system in my bus to make it safe to use bio diesel in winters for tours. Finding R99 - a renewable diesel that had no problems such as gelling, I was very happy and started thinking i could go on the road again with out polluting the planet. The fuel was expensive but so are tickets to shows these days!
But then I got this letter:
RENEWABLE DIESEL / PALM OIL!!!!!
Hi Neil,
Thank you for giving us hope that a tour with the help of Green Diesel would be possible again. It is criticized that for example the Neste Green Diesel is partly produced from palm oil. The increasing demand for this fuel and the subsidies lead to further destruction of the rainforest in Indonesia and Malaysia. You should make sure that the Green Diesel for a tour is really a green one.
Thanks for your music!
Ralf
Yes Ralf. That is a bummer and i don’t want to perpetrate that. These things are always improving and developing further. Maybe they will make a change. Too bad they used Palm Oil. R99 is still a lot better then burning FOSSIL fuel - or is it?. Keep watching it. Maybe we can improve it replacing Palm Oil. There must be a better oil to use. That is what we are looking for.
Thanks for pointing that out Ralf!
love,
be well
Neil
As seen above, In ‘Letters’ from members of NYA I started learning R99 uses Palm Oil - a bad thing because forests are cut down to grow the palm oil plants - forests that take in a lot of carbon and do a good thing to help Earth fight the Climate crisis. That was bad news. Sustainable is something you can do over and over with no damage to Earth.
Previously I had searched the internet to find out what was in R99 and failed to find much more than general vague descriptions of the ingredients and process, along with a lot of raves about its performance and sustainability. In all my research of R99, I had found no mention of palm oil from the manufacturer Neste. This environmentally damaging ingredient was missing from all their documentation.
Thanks for individuals who know so much about this subject and shared it with me.
So what does sustainable mean?
- ABLE TO CONTINUE OVER A PERIOD OF TIME. is what sustainable is defined as.
And what does renewable mean?
- capable of being replaced by natural ecological cycles or sound management practices.
CONCLUSION:
Unfortunately, Palm oil comes from the fruit of the oil palm tree, a type of tree found mainly in warm climates such as Africa and Asia. It's controversial because the trees grow in rainforest regions, and "the harvesting of this type of oil is being blamed for many negative environmental impacts,"
The methods used to produce palm oil are highly unsustainable and wreak havoc on the environment of Southeast Asia.
Based on that thought R99 as it is today is unacceptable for our planet as this and other similar practices are a great cause of our Climate Crisis. For this reason it was not useful for powering a musical tour. It is cleaner than fossil Diesel though and we are looking at the savings against using fossil fuel in a tour. Our preliminary conclusion was that the fuel is not good enough for us to use and is not sustainable.
So much for my preliminary conclusions. My Management reached out directly to Neste and got more clarity for me, as I had been so excited and positive about R99 and my chances for touring again without causing CO2 damage to Earth. The person from Neste, Matt Leuck, Technical Manager, told us that they do not use Palm Oil in their Renewable Diesel mix and it is illegal to use Palm Oil in the US. He did say that some territories in Europe do use Palm Oil. It looks like I had been going by European information and of course its different here. The USA is watching out for us!
So there it is. It looks like I can use R99 in my fleet of busses, generators and trucks when we tour again. That is great news! We are still gathering final information on Coldplay’s tour, as they found this first and did it!!!!
ny